Pandemic Parody

(AKA: RUBBER CHICKENS CALL TO ME)

I’m a strong believer in the value of humor and laughter. I have long used that to help get through dark times.

One might say (because I enjoy myself a good parody) “when I find myself in times of trouble, rubber chickens call to me….”

Liz and I enjoyed making a pandemic parody medley “album” in the guise of the old K-Tel style television commercials back in the spring.

It was a follow-up to something we published in April, a parody of the old Stealers Wheel classic “Stuck in the Middle with You.” Except we didn’t perform the whole song of anything; just snippets — like in those old television commercials about K-Tel compilation albums.

Our brand, of course, was KAY-TELL. (’Cause, again, “parody”)

As 2020 was drawing to a close we kicked around the idea of putting together a similar one but with a bit of a Christmas theme.

So I started to work on some lyrics. I wrote a bunch of them out; mostly just short segments of a few different songs.

We never ended up getting to do the work on recording the songs or the video. Stuff happens.

But on Christmas Day, after spending far too long trying to get a picture of us with the fur family (the only family we saw over the holidays due to pandemic lockdown)…

…we started goofing around and took a few pics of us drinking Corona in front of our book Christmas tree.

One of the images looked perfect for the album cover of the parody we never recorded. So I used it to make a fake album.

I posted the fake album cover along with some of the lyrics I’d written for it to social media, and people loved it and said they were actually even singing the lyrics I’d posted aloud.

Which made me take the time to put together a similar Kay-Tell parody fake commercial. This time it was only me (so it didn’t have the actually skill and talent of Liz for the singing or the video); but I thought I did a half decent job of it.

The songs in this short fake KAY-TELL “commercial” include:

• HECK THESE MALLS (To the tune of “Deck the Halls”)
• THIS YEAR BLOWS (To the tune of “Let it Snow”)
• RUDY THE NOSEMAN (To the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”)

I also mucked about with other titles where I never landed on fully satisfactory lyrics. Songs such as:

• JUDY THE READ-ONE-ARTICLE INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT (To the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”)
• OH, COME ALL YE PANDEMIC DENIERS (To the tune of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”)
• LOCKDOWN BELLS (To the tune of “Silver Bells”)

Warning: If you can’t guess from the thumbnail of the video image, this video contains adult language. It might even use the F word.

It was fun to create, even if it came out AFTER the Christmas season — which I also parody in the video.

Because if you can’t make fun of yourself, then you shouldn’t be making fun of anything else.

But it was good to get that parody playfulness out of my system and onto the page. Because this morning when I got up at 5:30 AM for my “prior to work” writing session, I was marvelously productive.

And any day where they can be laughter and productivity is a good day for me.

Even during a global pandemic.

A slightly different version of this post was originally published at http://markleslie.blogspot.com.